The Treefrog is me having fun with airbrush color and softness. I wanted to capture that moment where a red-eyed tree frog peeks around a leaf—curious, alert, but not scared. The pose is simple, so the color has to do most of the talking: the hot red feet against the cool greens, the blue band on the side, and the yellow-green head that pulls you in first. Airbrush is great for this kind of animal study because it can stay smooth like skin, but you can still suggest form with just a few darker passes.
I kept the background clean so the frog doesn’t have to fight for attention. The two leaves make a natural V-shape that frames the frog and gives him something to hold onto, but they’re intentionally softer and more repetitive than the frog so he stays the focal point. This one is really about delight—bright rainforest color, up close.
What worked best here was treating airbrush like a drawing tool for value, not just for smooth color. The more I deepened the underside shadows, the more the frog separated from the leaves—even though they share green. Next time I’d probably add one more cool shadow pass on the lower body to push the roundness even further, but this already shows how much depth you can get from careful shading alone.
